mmmm, shinybox

I’m starting to shift my thinking from getting good rhythm tracks (mission accomplished, apart from some light housecleaning type editing ahead of me) toward getting primo acoustic guitar tracks recorded for the Freakwitch album. I have a decent setup now in terms of recording, but one technique that has interested me for a long time is known as mid-side miking. It involves using 2 microphones, one of which has a cardioid (or omni) pickup pattern, the other of which must be a figure-8 pickup pattern. Sadly, none of my mics has a figure-8 pattern so this has remained elusive for me.

In addition, I’ve been intrigued by ribbon microphones, which have by all accounts a very natural sound, though they come with problems most notably that they are extremely fragile. Ribbon mics have been around for nearly 70 years and are definitely in the “vintage” (read: way too expensive) category. But recently, somemanufacturers have begun to sell new units, though they are still probably out of my league cost wise. However, the import market has started to pick them up, and you can now get ribbon mics at reasonable prices.

Most interestingly, ribbon mics inherently have a figure-8 recording pattern, which means I could begin to experiment with Mid-Side miking as well. So I’m thinking about adding a ribbon mic to my mic collection. The one I’m interested in is made by a small company called ShinyBox, which has the added benefit of being slightly cheaper than the Nady, and probably of slightly better quality though they are essentially the same mic. Plus they have a cool name which helps.

So yeah, I have to decide if this is worth doing for the acoustic guitar tracks I’ll be recording soon. Hmmm…..